Anna of Strathallan (22 page)

She said, 'You've got to, Calum. I'll only look it up when I get home if don't.'

He laughed. 'You'll hate it. "For the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and
there was no more
sea."'

She laughed too. 'I see. Well, it wouldn't be heaven for me without sea, but I do understand how John the Evangelist felt. He was a prisoner on Patmos, suffering ghastly tribulations, and that glassy sea he described below him was the symbol of his prison walls. And yet he had that mighty vision.'

It could have been tricky getting back over the bar, but they were able to follow the little fishing smacks beating back to harbourage. They called at the sheds and bought some fresh blue cod, for themselves, and for the folk back home.

'We'll cook ours immediately. I guess that's how you like your fish, fresh from the sea? I'll gut them and fry them while you do us a big pan of chips. I saw a chip basket under the sink. And don't for Pete's sake call them French Fried, they don't taste half as good.'

He'd known he'd give her fish for tea, had come prepared with lemons. They finished up with Kiwi fruit, or Chinese gooseberries as Calum called them, peeled and cut into thin crisp slices, their tiny black markings symmetrically centred, sprinkled with sugar, and topped with whipped cream. The percolated coffee Calum made was fragrant, ambrosial. Then, regretfully, they washed up, packed their things away.

'But we're going to watch the sunset,' Calum decreed. 'This was planned for a sunrise-to-sunset day. Did you notice that the Captain's quarter-deck, as the Fenton children call it, turns the corner to the west?'

They took deck-chairs out there, sat in absolute silence as the sun painted the sky even more vividly than at dawn, as it dropped down behind the hills so it could light another hemisphere. Suddenly the flame and tangerine and amber were gone, and the hills looked as if they drew purple cloaks about their shoulders and settled down for sleep.

Anna stood up. 'I thought nothing could have been more lovely than that sunrise, but perhaps sunset is even more spectacular. How could anyone not believe in eternity when they can see sunsets like that? As if unguessed-at pleasures lay beyond the sunset. Oh, dear, I'm at it again! Come on, Calum.'

They made faster time on the way home, because the darkness hid the landmarks that might have needed to be explained. Too fast, Anna thought, and rebuked herself. Hadn't Calum given her a whole day, full of joy and the abandon of the ocean?

The darkness was soft and velvety. Oh, yes, summer was a-comin' soon. There was something so friendly about the dark, it made you brave enough to say things, knowing your expression couldn't be read.

'Calum, there are a few things I'd like to discuss with you. I find it hard at home to get uninterrupted conversation in. It's about money. I always find it difficult as a subject, but I feel I could approach you tonight, after a day like this. You - won't take anything I say amiss, will you? I mean at first we found it only too easy to get offsides with each other.'

'We did. But it's a long time ago. I promise I won't take you up wrongly.' She thought there was a smile in his voice.

'Oh, thank you, Calum. You see, I know I get things addled. I don't want to snarl things up, this time.'

He laughed outright then. 'Fire ahead. You've spiked my guns already.'

'It's about Ian and Betty.'

'Ian and Betty?'

'Yes, you see they were away when I arrived. I surmised, because you were the manager, that Ian was younger than you. I thought he'd probably married young. But I found you were the youngest in the family. How come you were made manager?'

'Oh, I always worked at Strathallan, right from my time at Lincoln College on. Ian and Betty had high-country experience first. Looking after a place till the son of the owner was old enough to take over. By then Ian wanted a place of his own, so—'

'Then why did he come to Strathallan? Was it to help you out?'

He hesitated. She continued, 'Well, you've both done more for Strathallan than any hired help does normally. I feel it's only natural, with my father dead, and no one knowing about me, that you should inherit. Both you and Ian deserve to. I expected Ian and Betty to resent me. But Betty is sweet to me. It's almost unnatural. She's just like a sister, lets me share in the children, has never shown in any way that it has altered their standing. I think the situation must be talked out soon, Calum.'

His left hand left the wheel to pat hers. 'Relax! It's time we put you in the picture. There is no dividing fence between Ian and Betty's home and Strathallan homestead, it's true, but they are separate properties now, and Ian owns die half his house is on, but we work it as one, which is often done, with family estates. We share the woolshed, the machinery, everything. There never will be a dividing fence while your grandparents live. I felt, so did Ian, it would somehow take away Gilbert's pride in the property. He'd feel it was whittled down. But it was all that could be done when he had no one of his own.

'When I say it belongs to Ian, I'd better say he has a mighty big mortgage on it, but Gilbert did let him have it at a lesser price than if it had been on the open market. So Ian and Betty couldn't have resented you. You were pretty astute about that. They're probably glad you didn't come on the scene earlier, though. Gilbert might never have split it up then.'

'But what about you, Calum? You're manager, and ought to have the chance of Strathallan - the other half - in time.'

'I'll put you wise about that, too. I'm buying the other half of Strathallan already. Gilbert rents me the farm, I run sheep for him as well as for me and he no longer pays me wages. I put half my wool cheque every year into paying off the land. We have a special agreement, all drawn up and watertight. It doesn't apply to the homestead itself. I saw to that. It must be theirs till they go. I think you know that it occupies the very edge of the property. It's subdivided, but once again we've put up no fences. I've a feeling that Kitty and Gilbert are by no means ready to move into the Annexe. Now you're here the house has come to life for them. I want them to have all the happiness they can out of that.'

'But... when you and Victoria marry?'

'When that happens what's to prevent
us
moving into the Annexe? It's not exactly midget size, you know.'

Anna didn't answer, she couldn't. Then she said, brokenly, 'Oh, Calum, how I misjudged you! At first, that is. But for some time I've known you're not acquisitive. But one thing I'm determined on, you
must
get a substantial legacy. Ian too. I'll talk it out with my grandfather. You kept the place going when they thought they had no descendants.'

Calum said, 'I absolutely forbid you to do anything of the kind. I got the land cheaply too. The arrangement suits us all very nicely. Anna, there may be times when time itself must be taken by the forelock, others when one shouldn't act hastily. You've got all het-up because you distrusted me at first. That doesn't matter. I felt the same - was scared you might have come for what you could get out of the place. Even thought you might have been an impostor - but once I saw you!

'Well, oddly enough I've an odd streak in my nature. Independence, I suppose. I don't want anything dropped in my lap too cheaply. I want to work for it. And it would lessen what's legally yours. All Ian and I pay back must be left to you. Oh, I'm not stiff-necked with pride. My father gave me, and gave Ian, advances on what would have come to us at his death, to buy in our stock. That's different, it's family, and Dad's always said he'd like to see us enjoy what will fee ours, while he can see it. But what I do for Kitty and Gilbert, who are the salt of the earth, and had a very rough deal, mustn't have a price-tag on it.'

Anna could see his profile in the faint light, the aquiline nose, .the bony brows, the high cheekbones, the square chin and the tender mouth, and experienced recognition of the Highland pride that lived on in this man. She wouldn't want him to be less than that, even if she would have liked him to benefit from the estate.

Her voice shook a little, but she said, 'I can see you mean what you say. I admire you for it, Calum. And, though you didn't know it at the time, I'm going to apologize to you here and now for the fact that when I first came here, I felt with regard to the Doig family, I must remember the clan motto: Gang warily.'

He laughed at that. 'This day has been worthwhile, Anna of Strathallan. It's good to have been so honest with each other.'

Before they reached the Crannog turning he said, 'We
must
leave things as they axe, Anna. Before long you may fall in love with some young farmer who could live with you here at Strathallan. If that happens, Gilbert can buy my half back and I'll go and farm somewhere else. Think what it would mean to your grandparents if they knew that their Anna lived here, to raise their great-grandchildren in the Drummond tradition, on the land of their fathers.'

He ran the car into the barn. She said, 'Remind me of that Calum, any time you think my fancy is turning towards anyone who doesn't qualify ... say a white-collar civil servant in Roxburgh, or one of the engineers at the Hydro. There's no blueprint for love, and if ever I have to follow a man in his calling, I'll be very happy to think of you and Victoria at Strathallan.'

He didn't answer at first. Then when they walked towards the house he said, 'Don't forget the motto of the Drummonds is also the motto of the Doigs. Perhaps I too gang warily.'

She thought he paused, as if wanting her to comment on that. But she didn't. She felt it wouldn't be wise. But why it wouldn't was a thought she dare not analyse. Because the answer might, just might, upset too many lives.

G
RANDMOTHER'S
peony roses burgeoned in all the corners of the garden in deepest red and snowiest white. Snow-in- summer that Kitty scorned to call cerastium foamed over the rocks on the terraces and vied with the aubretia for pride of place. Azaleas in vivid coral and flame and mandarin orange blazed under the trees, as if they were burning bushes, like Moses's, and were not consumed. Guelder-roses
dotted their snowballs all over their green branches and the
drive that led to the road was a vision of beauty such as Anna had never seen before, lined its full length with an avenue of deep rose hawthorns.

Calum saw her standing there one morning, close under a tree, gazing up at the light filtering through it, as if she couldn't get enough of such loveliness. It was only when she began to come away that she became aware of his presence.

He said, 'You love the hawthorns, Anna?'

She turned eyes that were still a-dream up to him. 'Calum, you can't imagine what it's like never to have seen a hawthorn in bloom before. If you grow up with these things you take them for granted, but to see a tree like this put on myriads of blossoms out of tight little buds almost overnight, is like witnessing a miracle. Just look! Every branch is crusted with tiny rose-like flowers. Yet I feel as if this was always waiting for me.' She turned and made a gesture that comprehended it all, the square house sitting against its hillside facing the willow-shaded brook, the rose-arches over the wandering paths, the fringe of lilac catmint where the cats loved to roll, the big barns, the woolshed, the new house on die flank of Tushielaw Hill where they could see Betty cleaning her windows, sparkling in the sun.

'I can't imagine now it wasn't always part of my life.'

Calum said, 'I feel as if you've always been here too.'

Thsre was a silence between them, then he said hurriedly, 'Anna, why don't you tell Elizabeth what you just told me - about seeing a hawthorn in bloom for the first time? She's writing another garden book. As you know, those are the things she's so keen to incorporate. The human interest. You could make everyone who reads it see a hawthorn in full bloom as if they too saw it for the first time in their lives.'

Her eyes lit up 'Oh, Calum, do you think she'd like it? I'd love to think some thought of mine could be used in a book. Books are such immortal things. Long after they've stopped selling, they stay on people's shelves for generations, to delight children who were unborn when they were first penned.'

Calum, leaning on his slasher, looked down on her keenly.

'Thinking of anything in particular?'

He was surprised to see colour run up into her face. 'Yes.
I - I've been browsing in Dad's room. I've never wanted to find out what he was like before, because I thought I hated him for what he did to Mother. But
she
never hated him. But gradually, the knowledge that he redeemed himself in his last hours, by such bravery, has sort of leavened it for me. He had a habit of marking the passages he liked in his books, and because he was so footloose they are still here.

'Gran caught me one day. She was so glad. She said, when I showed her some lines of poetry he must've liked, "You are seeing your father as he was meant to be." We've talked about him a lot since. It's so stupid, but I find myself hoping that in his later years the philosophy of those writers he admired - some of them lived three or four hundred years ago, and more - may have helped him find the courage he must have had to go into that mine and bring so many out...' Her voice trailed off.

Looking up, she saw that Calum was moved. He straightened up, shifted the slasher he was going to attack the gorse hedge with, from one hand to the other, seemed to be seeking for words. Then they heard the rattle of a car coming over the cattle-stops. They looked through the hawthorns.

'It's Victoria,' said Calum.

By now Anna had achieved a measure of success in disciplining herself to accept witnessing their kisses of greeting, their frequent departures on outings where, presumably, three would have been a crowd. It was something she had to live with, and by now she loved Victoria too much to ever let her suspect by any unguarded look or warmth in her tone, when she spoke to Calum, that she had a
tendresse
for him, Victoria had suffered deeply long ago. She deserved the happiness she would have with Calum.